5 Twitter case studies to inspire your marketing strategy

Does the prospect of cutting through on Twitter induce a cold sweat? Here to inspire your strategy are five cases studies where creativity got results.

Human brains aren’t good at rationalising big numbers. So get ready to engage your grey matter. Every day, a frankly astronomical 500 million tweets are published. 500 million per day. Think about that for a second.

Faced with such numbers, you could be forgiven for feeling defeatist. It’s hard to muster the motivation to produce artfully crafted 140-character epigrams when you doubt the right people will even see them, let alone act on them.

What chance do you have of cutting through?

Every chance, that’s what. Get your strategy right and you can expand your reach, promote your brand and foster relationships with your target audience – sometimes without spending so much as a penny in advertising costs.

Here to inspire your Twitter triumphs are five case studies that prove thought, creativity and opportunism are every bit as useful as big budgets and big follower counts in terms of getting results.

Let’s begin.

Greenhouse

When it comes to the future of your business, hiring the right people is kind of important. That’s where Greenhouse comes in. Think of it as a recruitment platform that helps firms implement a structured model for finding, interviewing and hiring top candidates.

Greenhouse had a simple goal: use Twitter to acquire new subscribers for their weekly newsletter. The strategy they chose was to create a Twitter Ads campaign that linked to a newsletter subscription landing page.

The results were impressive. Greenhouse increased their subscriber count by 15 per cent in just one month. The subscription landing page had a 62 per cent conversion rate. This success was driven by three key factors.

Firstly Greenhouse used Twitter’s Tailored Audiences tool to reach people who had already visited their website or attended a conference. By targeting corporate recruiters in the US and Canada, Greenhouse made sure their campaign hit only people who were already familiar with the platform and would be interested in its benefits.

Secondly the team tested six tweets with slightly different copy to see which converted best. Once they found a top performer, they could focus their efforts on making sure their audience was exposed to the advert that was most likely to drive action.

Finally the Greenhouse marketing team made sure their branding was consistent from tweet to landing page. This made for a cohesive user journey and reinforced brand identity, boosting Greenhouse’s credibility.

But more than anything, Greenhouse’s success is a lesson in knowing your audience. Remember that your message doesn’t have to reach everyone, just the people who matter.

Pact Coffee

Twitter is a powerful broadcasting tool. But it’s not much cop if you don’t know what to say. Coffee connoisseur Pact Coffee source, roast, grind and deliver the world’s best beans to offices and homes around the UK. They wanted to use Twitter to boost brand awareness and interact with their audience. But how?

With Twitter Ads, of course. To reach foodies, Pact Coffee used Twitter’s follower targeting tool to promote their tweets to people similar to those following Ocado and Guardian Food. Pact Coffee also segmented their campaigns, each targeting a small crop of usernames. This made it easy to track which audiences were best responding to their offers.

Their campaign generated a 13-fold uplift in retweets. Best of all, by paying close attention to the conversations they were having, Pact Coffee were able to create a Twitter engagement strategy that continues to get results.

British Heart Foundation

Nobody really wants their timeline filled with references to the prospect of their heart stopping. The challenge for the British Heart Foundation then was significant: how do you drive engagement in a subject that most people would rather avoid?

Their approach was impressively creative and reaped dividends.

Using Twitter’s auto-response mechanic, @TheBHF sent out a tweet suggesting a scenario in which a user is casually browsing Twitter only for their heart to suddenly stop. Users were asked to like the tweet in order to see what happened next.

Mirroring real-life survival statistics, 9 out of 10 people who responded were told nobody in their vicinity knew CPR and that they didn’t survive the hypothetical scenario. Frightening but effective.

The campaign was an unequivocal success. More than 26,000 took part in the interactive experience, with more than 2,000 retweeting their ‘bad news’. What’s more, over 9,000 mentions gave the BHF a year-on-year uplift of 433 per cent, and mentions of CPR in the UK more than doubled.

Reed

As you’d expect from the UK’s leading job site, Reed is a treasure trove of useful careers content. Keen to promote it, Reed took to Twitter.

Their aim was to use Promoted Tweets to encourage website clickthroughs among 18 to 35 year olds. To find these users, Reed targeted followers of celebrities, influencers and brands that are popular with millennials. Once the campaign was up and running, Reed continually measured the performance of their tweets and optimised accordingly.

They discovered that their most popular content included job listings from global brands along with careers advice such as CV and cover letter tips. This enabled Reed to double down on their efforts, producing and promoting content that their target audience was more likely to engage with.

The campaign increased Reed’s website traffic by a staggering 40 per cent. Thanks to a high link click rate (peaking at 3.75 per cent), Reed paid an average of just 10p per conversion – 50 per cent below industry benchmarks.

Cats Protection

Some think they bring good luck, others bad. Whichever you believe, the fact is that black cats make up 45 per cent of homeless cats waiting to be rehomed. In 2016 Cats Protection, the UK’s leading cat charity, asked OST to create a social media campaign raising awareness of the plight of black cats.

The campaign was launched three weeks before Black Cat Day and included video, graphics and a photo competition around the concept “beauty is more than fur deep”. OST also reached out to celebrities and influencers to help broadcast the campaign far and wide.

It worked.

The campaign generated 329,000 engagements from 17 million impressions across Facebook and Twitter as well as 258,000 video views of more than 30 seconds. 5,000 leads were generated from the photo competition, and #BlackCatDay was the #1 trending hashtag in the UK on National Black Cat Day. A large part of this success was thanks to retweets on Twitter from major accounts including The BBC, The Telegraph and Ricky Gervais.

It’s a potent reminder of the power of celebrity and influencer engagement.

Over to you…

It can feel daunting when you are briefed with making an impression on Twitter. But the trick is to remember that you don’t need to reach everyone, just the people who matter: your target audience. It’s not about the quantity of leads you generate, but the quality.

Define your target audience. Share content that inspires, engages and educates them. Monitor what works and tweak your strategy accordingly. Reach out to influencers and start conversations with your leads. The results will follow.